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Ok so I'm sorry nothing much happens in this chapter, but I promise the next chapter's gonna be fun~

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"I'm going to make it clear for you, Arthur; this is going to have to stop."

Three hours after his revelation, Alfred was starting to have some regrets.

The subject of his epiphany was sat still delicately on the arm of the sofa, his legs primly crossed as he eyed Alfred with distaste. Alfred had tried to be a man and negotiate with him, but it just wasn't happening. Any rule he put down was immediately ignored, be it his curfew or Alfred's attempt to get him to go out once a week and socialise, and he was starting to get tired of it. Anything he said, anything that would remotely put him in a position of power and mean that Arthur would have to do what he said, was shot down and stamped into the ground before Alfred could make any more compromises. He'd suggested youth clubs, sad little loser societies for sixteen year olds who still traded Pokémon cards, even just the street corner where he was bound to pick up a few grimy friends to drink WKD with, but none of it had been taken on board, not even cynically. It seemed to him, unfortunately, that he was fighting a losing battle.

Cool green eyes blinked slowly, like a cat's. "I believe I'm just making a stand for my preferences on the matter."

"That doesn't explain why you've refused to talk to me for an hour and have been threatening to walk out of the window if I make this call." Alfred, phone in hand, number of Arthur's designated therapist flashing on the screen, was getting ready to make the call whether the Brit liked it or not.

"I don't need a therapist, or a counsellor, or anyone to tell me anything." Arthur stated for the fifth time, drumming his fingers on his knee with some form of a patient air. "So you can put the phone down, and go back to watching cartoons or whatever it is you do in your spare time when you're not at work."

Alfred, reining it in as all older siblings have to when dealing with a difficult child, sighed. "I get that," Not that he'd ever been to see a therapist in his life. "Just please, give this a try."

Arthur gave him a lofty look and then proceeded to avoid eye contact with him. "I could count on my left hand how many times someone's said that to me and when it's actually been a good idea; first it was whiskey, then cigarettes, then social activities; see where I'm going with this?"

"Counselling's meant to help you get better."

"I don't need to get better if there's nothing wrong with me."

Arthur's therapist had called Alfred's mother the day before, and had explained that this scenario was likely to happen. Whether he liked it or not, Arthur had certain complications which involved words with lots of p's and e's in them that Alfred hadn't understood a word of, and that he needed a good old chat with a counsellor once a week just to keep the flood of depression from seeping through the cracks. As much as he had been revolted by the idea of driving Arthur to this place and then holding his hand like they were going through a difficult marriage, he had rather liked the idea of a happy Arthur, rather than an Arthur that moped about the place and made less joking comments about jumping out of the window.

It was getting more and more difficult to control his temper. "Well you're hardly jumping around for joy, are you?"

He was given an icy look for that, but he didn't return it. "Just because two people thought it was a great idea to shut me in the cellar during the summer holidays with just enough food to stay alive doesn't mean I want any coddling from overweight middle-aged women."

Arthur had indeed spent a considerable amount of time in a cellar, and the counsellors had practically cried at Alfred down the phone when he had asked about whether those rumours were true or not. He couldn't deny the tales of a nine year old crying through a bolted door were horrible and made his skin crawl, but he was reaching the point of just saying that if Arthur didn't want counselling, then he shouldn't be made to have counselling. Alfred was sure loads of kids had recovered from being locked in small rooms by their parents without turning into raging psychopaths, and he had perfect faith that Arthur would just continue to be his prickly self and not be much of a problem to anyone other than Alfred himself and the pizza man, whom Arthur had had an argument with over the fact that the Italian flag on the lad's lapel had been the wrong way round.

"You don't have to be like that; it's only a few sessions, just so you, uh," Alfred looked down at the letter in his other hand. "Settle in."

Arthur stood, and crossed the room, obviously entirely not settled. "You've already established your music taste is a lesser and meaningless kind, your carpet is atrocious and I would recommend peroxide for those stains, and so far your skills as an older brother have extended only so far as answering the phone on its final ring, what more is there to be settled into?"

Suppressing a scowl, Alfred dropped the letter on the sofa (he would sit on it later and suddenly remember where he was going to have to drag Arthur to in the morning) and went to lean against the wall by Arthur, who was practically inching his way toward the door.

"Look, kiddo, it's either counselling or youth prison, what would you rather?"

Arthur practically hissed at him like a pissy cat. "I'd rather you leave me alone and go tell your counsellors that I don't need any help."

"If you're going to be like that, you could just settle your royal self into bed and leave Daddy Alfred to the areas of his life that don't concern you out."

"You're not my Daddy," Arthur's eyes glinted shards of cruel amusement, and he spat the endearment out as if it burned his tongue. "And what life other than me? I'm the bloody centre of your universe now, and if my counselling's less important than your videogame club or whatever, I'm telling your Mummy."

"I have a job," Alfred replied stiffly, turning and striding away to primly kick a discarded pizza box aside. Dinner had been painful; Arthur had picked at his pizza and barely ate two slices before declaring pompously that he'd tasted better lukewarm ready meals prepared by his drunk of a father, and Alfred had sat and simmered until Arthur left to unpack his bags with military grade neatness in the rickety chest of drawers Alfred had added by the side of his bed as a second thought. "And I work damn hard."

Arthur, as Alfred had observed, had a horrible habit of doing a sort of sour laugh-sniff at anything Alfred said in a bid to preserve his dignity, and it humiliated Alfred more than it made him angry. This sixteen year old sort-of-recluse was walking all over him in those beaten brown boots which he refused to take off as he didn't want his socks to touch the carpet, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he complained to his mother, she'd just laugh and leave him to do his laundry on his own. If he complained to anyone else, they'd just give him a funny look and continue on their way. Abuse cases weren't meant to be as tenacious as Arthur, and they certainly weren't meant to put up this much of a fight. A selfish, awful part of Alfred was just wishing Arthur would fall into some kind of deep sadness or just lose all this attitude, so Alfred could calmly coach him through the rest of his education years and gently release him into the wild as, he had stressed this quite clearly when regretfully agreeing on the matter with his mother, as soon as possible.

A busy brow raised, and Alfred resisted the temptation to make a remark on them. When Alfred wasn't getting ticked off by that thin smirk, or by the cruel sheen to those dull eyes, Arthur's eyebrows were certainly a topic of internal debate. They weren't excessively large, not worthy of combing-type large, but large enough to seem slightly out of place on his delicate face. When he wasn't getting overly worked up about the fact that Arthur wasn't doing as he was told, he was betting on when those eyebrows were going to get tired of hanging there on his face and take a walk like two blonde, hairy caterpillars.

"And where does this phenomenon occur? Handing out leaflets for your talented friend's indie band doesn't count, you know."

Alfred tapped his fingers on his elbows and once again tried to keep a lid on the frustration. "In a café not far from the high street, I work Monday to Thursday every week until winter."

"What's the joint called?" It wasn't curiosity. It seemed like Arthur just wanted to know for the sake of knowing, rather than there being an actual interest behind his words. "I'm imagining something with the word 'burger' in it."

"I'm not going to tell you," Alfred relished in the little power he had still managed to retain. "Wouldn't want you and your nerdy friends disturbing my customers."

"I don't have any friends."

Alfred had been expecting something like 'They're not nerds' or 'Why would I come to your stupid café anyway', but 'I don't have any friends' had been entirely unexpected. To be fair, Arthur was a little pricklier than your average porcupine and had a pretty sharp mouth when it came to, well, other people in general, so Alfred wasn't really surprised. Alfred had been popular in high school, and got on to a somewhat general extent with most of the kids in his classes. To think that Arthur had no friends at all was a little difficult to grasp, but he guessed high school was tough for him then. A little kid whose only defence was a fair amount of sass and a glare that could curdle milk wasn't going to generate enough protection to be a lone wolf; there were going to be some guys who pushed him around and ignored his insults. If any conclusive thoughts had been generated from this realisation, it was that Alfred could have found himself the chance to show Arthur that he wasn't so much of a dick as he had so far made himself out to be. If he came across a dark street, and saw his precious foster brother (who wasn't his brother, he had to remember that) being kicked into the ground by pimply seventeen year olds, he could easily take them on and save an awestruck Arthur from turning into a human piñata. That would show him, that would—

"I don't know whether it's been going on for some time and I haven't noticed, excuse me for that, but you've been staring somewhat apishly at the wall for some time and I need to know if I need to call the morgue or not."

He looked up, into the sneering face of Arthur, and rubbed his eyes, making a tired noise with somewhat excessive noise. As he yawned, and stretched his arms out, he could see Arthur looking mildly disgusted as always but tired to boot. It was about half ten, sixteen year old Alfred's bedtime, so he was hoping that Arthur would take the hint and get himself into bed sharpish.

"Just tired," He admitted. It had been a long day, and he hadn't exactly had the most gentle or full night's sleep the night before. "Reckon you should get to bed too."

Obviously dark-ringed eyes gave him a scathing look. "I'm not four; I know when I'm tired and when I'm not."

Alfred held up his hands in the 'whoa' position, trying to stop Arthur from glaring with such acidity at him. "Look, I'm not trying to start a war here; you just look really tired, man."

"So now you're telling me how I feel? The service is amazing in this place- I get my own emotions decided for me as well as what looks like an expressionist composition of coffee stains on the floor." Arthur turned and stalked off into their bedroom with obvious sheepishness, indicating that he was indeed tired, and that he knew Alfred had been right. He took time to appreciate this one sign of weakness, before he began to gather up the empty pizza boxes to cram into the bin on a later date.

Wedging another bed beside his own had been difficult. Making look less like a double bed and more like two perfectly separate beds had been more so. The two beds, one a rickety Ikea experiment he'd done when he'd first bought the flat, and the other a ready-made cheapo bed which had been pushed as far away from Alfred's bed as it could possibly be. Alfred had made do with the Ikea-assembly-with-hiccups bed as he was afraid Arthur would have something snarky to say about it, which meant he would be squished up against the radiator all night; something he would have been more than happy to be if he was alone, but being trapped in a stuffy room with the route to the bathroom blocked by an antsy British teenager wasn't his most favoured situation.

He was hoping Arthur was one of those boys who just lay inert on a surface for more or less thirty seconds before falling asleep- he didn't look like he slept that much to be honest- and Alfred was having worries as to whether insomnia had been thrown into the abused-mind thing as Arthur had hit fifteen. As any decent human being would, he had read up on the side effects of traumatic and on-going events such as abuse, and insomnia had been on the top of that list. This was a worry, as Alfred was out like a light as soon as he stopped moving enough for his body to realise that he was no longer slamming buttons on his Xbox and was actually going to bless himself with a good three hours sleep, and if Arthur was going to be sat up for all that time, he was going to have to make sure he didn't just escape while he was asleep. Though he hadn't shown any interest in taking the short journey from the window to the street outside, Alfred wasn't ruling that possibility out just yet. As far as his overly worried mind was concerned, if Arthur wasn't asleep when he went in there, he wasn't going to move from his bedside until he was counting sheep by the thousand. The last thing he needed was for Arthur to do something stupid like run away or throw himself out of the window, his mother would be really angry then.

Speaking of his mother, he thought it best to give her a call now that Arthur was safely out of the room and hopefully asleep. Digging around in his pocket for his phone, he tapped in one of the only things he'd actually memorised other than Call of Duty cheat codes.

As predicted, she picked up after the first ring. "How's it going?"

Alfred did a quick sweep of the room just to check Arthur was hiding around some obscure corner. "He's more stubborn than broken, if I'm honest. Took me an hour to get him to touch the carpet with his socks."

"He's just settling in, Alfred, it's what teenagers do."

"So his settling in involves calling me an asshat, like I know what that means, refusing to take those shoes off and then insulting the friendly neighbourhood pizza man?" If he was going to receive any more of this Arthur's Just a Kid Don't Act Like a Big Baby business, he may as well be honest about what Arthur had done. So far, he was appearing just the littlest bit rude.

"I recall the experience of your teenage years as something between being trapped in the seventh circle of Hell and keeping a bison in the living room."

"I was never rude though, right?" Alfred strolled around the living room, impossible to keep still when on the phone, getting ready for a nice long thrashing from his mother. She was a great parent, and bringing up Alfred single handedly took some amount of elbow grease, but sometimes she would just go all foggy-headed and completely miss the obvious. Arthur was being a little too snappy for Alfred's liking, and he at least wanted her to try and understand it from his point of view.

But, similar to Alfred, she read people like a dyslexic reads the Oxford Dictionary. "Alfie, baby, this is just something you're going to have to get used to; Arthur's a lot less confident in himself than you were, just give him a chance."

Alfred sighed. "He's got all the self-belief he needs to look like he wants to deep fat fry me and to blatantly disregard my rule."

"Your rule? Who are you Alfred, the King of Spain?"

"I could be the President and that kid wouldn't flush the toilet if I told him to."

He heard his mother make something between an exasperated noise and a snort on the other end of the phone. "Do you remember how I used to treat you when you were in one of your moods and you wouldn't do anything but sulk?"

The cheat codes stockpiled in Alfred's head had left no room for childhood memories. "No."

"Then you won't remember that acting like you're the Roman Emperor isn't going to get you anywhere, be it with a child or a teenager, you're going to have to think about using a different approach with Arthur."

"Thumbscrews?"

"I'm being serious, Alfred."

"So am I."

"Just remember what he's been through, it's more horrible than either of us could imagine."

"I get that," Alfred flopped onto the sofa, tucking his knees up to rest his chin on them. "What I don't get is why he can't be as charming as he was on that visit we had to his little beige prison cell."

"He was charming, he really was, I think you just need to bring it out in him again. Maybe this, rudeness, as you say, is a sort of defence mechanism."

"Against what? Am I really that terrifying?"

"You're an older kid, Alfred; he's not going to be that comfortable around you to begin with."

"He doesn't look like he's ever been comfortable around any other human being in his life."

She clicked her tongue. "Then make him feel comfortable around you. Be his friend."

Alfred was in despair. "I really don't think he cares that much about being my friend, or anyone else's. You read the note from his school. And saw his grades. He doesn't want anyone getting in the way, he even told me."

"But you're not at his school, Alfred, you're not someone he can just avoid. He lives with you, and you're pretty much his guardian now,"

Alfred felt his stomach lurch at that. Taking care of things wasn't his strong point.

"He's going to have issues about making friends, his foster parents hit him for goodness sake, but you're going to have to try if you want him on your side." She did that chuckle she always did when talking about Alfred's previous or current boyfriends, and it sent him into a little panic.

"Of the bed? He's sixteen, mom, he's like, a child," Alfred was praying Arthur was tucked up in bed and couldn't hear a word of this. "Plus, he's probably the type to get antsy about… that sort of thing."

"Of course he's going to be antsy, he's never had a boyfriend in his life."

"I think you mean girlfriend, mom, he doesn't look the type." Alfred wasn't sure what 'the type' was, but it was the phrase he always used when explaining to his mother that just because her son was gay, it didn't mean every other loser going nowhere was as well.

"You never know, Alfred, it might be the reason he hates you so much."

Alfred backpedalled, trying to work out what she was implying and why this was relevant in any way shape or form. "There is no way Arthur is the— are you saying you thing he's coming onto me?"

"I'm stating it as a possibility, after all, he's never had a girlfriend."

"Loads of kids his age have never been in relationships, it's just normal I guess." Alfred was starting to feel uncomfortable, talking about Arthur and relationships in the same conversation. "And the only relationship I want to have with him is one where he knows to put the toilet seat down and not to play reggae music in the house."

"Still got the reggae problem? Alfred, you were a baby when we discovered that," She laughed, and Alfred pulled a face. "Anyway, that's beside the point; you need to make Arthur like you, whether it's the conventional method of friendship,"

"He will cut out my eyes with a spoon."

"Or the slightly less conventional approach of getting into his pants—"

"I'm not getting into his pants, mom, not even if he stopped acting like an ass and stopped wearing green. He's not my type."

She snorted. "Alfie, I beg to differ."

"Anyhow," Alfred was going to be more than glad when she decided she had better things to do than bicker with her son and hang up. "I'm not going near him with a ten foot barge pole and a police riot shield, so you can sleep well at night and I can go and see if he's actually asleep and not listening in on this very charming conversation." A brisk subject change, and she would realise he really didn't want to talk about this and that he really needed to go.

"Oh, sure," She always pretended she had no clue why he was trying to escape, but he could almost hear her grin. "Call you sometime this week, okay?"

"Yeah, preferably when I'm not working; the boss doesn't like it when we leave to take calls from our mothers."

"Whatever you say, baby, I love you." The phone clicked before Alfred could reply. Not that he wanted to. He was feeling a little miffed at the moment.

Apparently acting hostile to one's foster brother and then stating very clearly that he wanted nothing to do with Alfred was a sign of mutual attraction. If so, Alfred was going to have to rework his entire strategy on how to win Arthur over. He had started to feel a little queasy as the conversation had dragged on, and how he was craving silence and sleep.

Rubbing his eyes, he set the phone down in a place on the sofa he was bound to sit on some time in the future, and plodded into the bedroom. He hadn't got round to painting the walls in there yet, so it was still some kind of flowery wallpaper, and the carpet had little coffee stains where he'd crashed into bed with a mug of instant and had been a little clumsy with it. If one didn't look too closely at them, they looked like brown stains of another type. Arthur had almost certainly cottoned on to this, and Alfred was expecting a comment or two on the décor if he was still awake.

As he pushed the door open, he imagined for a moment that Arthur was tucked up in the little Ikea bed with his, let him guess, green pinstripe pyjamas on with his eyes closed, dreaming away about his top grades and his odd music tastes. He was visioning a sort of nativity of stuffed animals- Arthur looked the type to still hang onto those sorts of things- and maybe a cute little nightcap to boot. He was getting ready to burst in with a grin onto a sleeping vision of something a little more beautiful than the awake version of the boy, when someone pretty obviously awake cleared their throat.

Alfred emerged into the room to be greeted with the image of a little fully dressed Arthur smirking up at him with a book in his lap.

"Why aren't you asleep?" Alfred inadvertently demanded, still standing in the doorway in a state of disappointment. He'd wanted Arthur to be asleep. He'd prayed for Arthur to be asleep. But no, he was wide awake, and looking pretty pleased with himself as Alfred continued to look like he'd just received more Breaking Bad spoilers.

"Oh, I just loved the idea of you getting into my pants," Sarcasm dripped from his voice like the leaky tap in the bathroom, only the leaky tap didn't make Alfred's face burn and his temper rise with tsunami-type force. "Really made me look up from my book." The Brit was sat cross-legged, rather primly so, looking as if it was nine in the morning, rather than fast approaching eleven at night.

"You'll have sweet dreams then," Alfred was fed up of this kid's little prying comments into his life. He turned his back on Arthur and pulled off his t-shirt, tossing it somewhere to his right, on Arthur's side of the room. "I hope you don't sleep talk."

"Indeed, wouldn't want you hearing all the ways I'm going to make your mother disown you, it'd spoil the fun." Even at this late hour, Arthur was on top form. Alfred's teeth were audibly grinding.

"Just go to sleep, I'm tired, I don't care." His jeans were then thrown somewhere in the vicinity of Arthur's bed in the hope he would trip on them on the way to the bathroom or something, and he rooted around for something to wear. He turned around to face Arthur again, hoping a thunderous sort of expression would help put his point across.

Arthur looked like he was about to say something, but then he made a strangled noise and stared straight past him.

Alfred looked behind him but, seeing just the door and the wall, he frowned. "Something up, kiddo?"

For the first time, Arthur's pale face coloured rather visibly.

Coloured light pink.

Arthur was blushing.

"Couldn't you just…" Arthur was waving a hand vaguely at Alfred, still not looking at him but scowling murderously. "You know…" He looked as if he was having some difficulty with his words. "…put some clothes on…"

Alfred looked down at himself, at his figure he had done so many crunches for in the gym, and smirked at Arthur. The kid was weedy as anything, no muscle of any kind on his body, and although Alfred didn't have the arms of Ivan Braginsky, he was pretty decent in that area. It wasn't like he was as vain as the Frenchman who also trained in the same gym as he did, but he was damn proud of his body. He'd had to seriously cut down on the pizza for it, but all those hours of pining over pepperoni were worth seeing Arthur's face turn the same colour as a traffic light.

"Why?" Alfred now made a point of striding around, reaching down to grab his pyjama bottoms and making sure Arthur got a good eyeful of his torso as he did so. He didn't care what anyone else would have thought about what he was doing; watching the Brit squirm like this was funny to say the least. "If you've got a problem, please tell me."

The precious moment Alfred had savoured was lost, and Arthur turned an ugly shade of puce.

"Put a shirt on, you pompous twat." His voice was almost as sour as his face, and Alfred resisted the temptation to burst into giggles.

"On it, boss." Instead, Alfred just paraded around a little longer, watching the skinny teenager's face darken. "It's nice though, maybe you should try it."

Arthur looked ready to vomit.

"It's good for you," The tables had been turned, and now Alfred was having a mighty good time making Arthur turn steadily purple with anger. "Airs your, uh, muscles."

"Stop being a prick, and just get dressed," The insults were flowing freer than Alfred's comebacks. "Or you're going to have more stains joining those lovely streaks on your carpet."

It's your carpet now too, buster, was what he wanted to say, but he didn't dare bring up the whole prolonged house sharing thing, it would make him feel uncomfortable too. "Piddle stains? 'Cause you're looking a little like the child of an over excited spaniel and an aubergine."

The Brit's eyes bulged. "Blood stains, from where I cut out your heart and feed it to my dead mother."

"Whoa, slow down there, I'll tell Mommy if you keep talking like that."

"I don't have a mommy."

Not knowing what to say to that without sounding horribly rude, Alfred relented and got into bed, turning off the lamp on his side of the room. He heard Arthur mutter some choice curse words, then heard the Ikea bed creak horribly as he too settled himself down to a night of decidedly disturbed slumber. Neither of them were in a good mood; Arthur fuming so much steam was about to fly out of his ears, Alfred pushing down his irritation at his mother as well as at the Brit. Facing away from each other, they said nothing after that, just closing their eyes and trying to get over the fact that this was happening and that neither of them were going to get rid of each other for a considerable amount of time.

Needless to say, that night at least one of them was thinking about Alfred's body.

Please tell me what you thought of this chapter, I'm sorry that nothing much really happens, but I still want to read your reviews!